7 things to watch in Tuesday's primaries

8/7/12 2:28 PM EDT

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At least two House incumbents will lose their jobs. Republicans will pick Senate nominees against Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill and Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan House delegation could get a makeover.

Those are the stakes Tuesday when voters go to the polls in four states — Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington.

Here are seven things to watch Tuesday:

Palin power

After endorsing in more than 60 races in 2010 — a record that included some real clunkers — Sarah Palin has scaled back her designs this cycle. She’s been much more judicious in handing out endorsements and has astutely backed the winner in the four most important GOP Senate primaries to date.

With her latest Senate primary endorsee — Sarah Steelman in Missouri — Palin has picked a candidate in her own political mold. But Steelman has trailed in the polls against her two better-funded rivals, Rep. Todd Akin and businessman John Brunner, who has spent roughly $7 million. If Steelman pulls off a victory with a late surge, Palin is going to be credited with delivering a critical jolt of energy at just the right time in the race for the nomination against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Aside from confirming Palin’s clout with the GOP base, a Steelman win could further the former Alaska governor’s influence with the Senate GOP Conference. In every Senate race in which she has endorsed this year, the GOP nominee has an advantage in the November polls. Add in the six current senators Palin backed in 2010 and suddenly it begins to look like a decent number of GOP senators in the next Congress could be in her political debt.

Michigan’s late-breaking Senate primary

Clark Durant has closed in on former Rep. Peter Hoekstra in the final weeks of the Michigan GOP Senate primary but recent polls suggest it’s not going to be enough.

Durant appears to be the beneficiary of a Ted Cruz bounce, winning some key conservative endorsements in the wake of the tea party’s Texas Senate breakthrough. Still, most Michigan observers believe Durant will fall short to the former congressman in a contest that features familiar tea party vs. establishment overtones.

One reason is that Durant’s candidacy never caught fire among national grass-roots conservatives and tea party supporters in the same way that Cruz and Richard Mourdock of Indiana did.

Unless Durant wins big in southeastern Michigan and Hoekstra runs more weakly than expected in his western Michigan base, this won’t be the next place the GOP establishment gets a smackdown and Hoesktra will be the one to face his former House colleague Debbie Stabenow in November.

Will Detroit be without black representation?

With longtime Rep. John Conyers locked in a competitive Democratic primary and Rep. Hansen Clarke looking like an underdog, the city of Detroit might be without African-American representation in the House for the first time in close to six decades.

The prospect is hard to imagine in the city that Mayor Coleman Young governed for roughly 20 years and that is currently 83 percent black.

But thanks to the latest round of redistricting, Conyers is now in a district where 60 percent of the voters are new to him and Clarke is pitted against suburban Democratic Rep. Gary Peters, so both Conyers and Clarke find their seats in jeopardy.

After looking shaky earlier in the year, Conyers seems like the better bet to win — and to ensure Detroit retains at least one black congressman. According to a recent EPIC-MRA poll, Conyers has built a wide lead over his closest challenger, state Sen. Glenn Anderson, and the crowded primary field works to the incumbent’s advantage.

Bloody Kansas

The long-running standoff between moderate and conservative forces within the Kansas GOP plays out Tuesday in a series of primaries that will determine operating control of the state Senate.

The battle pits challengers backed by Gov. Sam Brownback and interest groups like the state Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity against a group of GOP centrists who have formed a coalition with Democrats to block parts of Brownback’s agenda.

While Kansas remains as Republican as ever, the internecine conflict has proved a lifeline to Democrats over the past two decades. Among other things, it helped facilitate the election of former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and led former state GOP Chairman Mark Parkinson to switch parties and run as Sebelius’s lieutenant governor in 2006.

The state’s all-GOP congressional delegation gets to watch from the sidelines — none of Kansas’s four House members have primary opposition this year.

When will the Thad McCotter district get decided?

Don’t expect a result Tuesday night out of the GOP primary to replace former Michigan GOP Rep. Thad McCotter.

In case you missed the months-long drama in the suburban Detroit-based 11th District, here’s the backstory: A nominating petition snafu in late May knocked McCotter off the primary ballot, leaving long-shot tea party candidate Kerry Bentivolio as the only Republican in the race.

Worried that the little-known and underfunded Bentivolio might actually lose the Republican-oriented seat in November, the local GOP establishment began casting about for possible write-in challengers in the August primary.

Support coalesced behind Nancy Cassis, a former state legislator, who has run a respectable — though uphill — write-in campaign against Bentivolio.

But serious write-in campaigns are rare and election offices aren’t built to handle them in an expeditious manner. The write-in ballots have to be counted by hand, which takes time. So does examining all the different spelling variations of the write-in candidates’ names.

In this race, there are two other certified write-in candidates other than Cassis, which most likely means lots of write-in votes that need to be hand-counted. The widespread expectation is that there might be a result to announce by Wednesday afternoon, but some local clerks expect it could drag into Thursday.

There’s one scenario in which there might be a result Tuesday night — a big win by Bentivolio that clearly exceeds the write-ins.

Upton vs. Hoogendyk, the rematch

After former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk put a scare into Michigan GOP Rep. Fred Upton by holding him to 57 percent in the 2010 GOP primary, the rematch between the powerful chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and his conservative challenger figured to be a barn-burner.

It hasn’t worked out that way, though. National conservative groups never engaged on Hoogendyk’s behalf and Upton made sure he wasn’t caught sleeping — he’s already spent over $2.1 million, which is more than he spent in the entire 2010 primary and general elections.

In his southwestern Michigan-based seat, Upton’s moderate politics make him more susceptible to a primary challenge than in the general election, but the most recent public poll in the 6th District showed Upton with a comfortable 30 percentage point lead.

Battle of the scions

In Missouri, Democratic Reps. Russ Carnahan and Lacy Clay face each other in an incumbent vs. incumbent match between the sons of two of the state’s most prominent political families.

Carnahan is the underdog in a newly crafted district that has less than one-third of his old constituents.

The contest has an undeniable racial dimension: Clay, who is black, has suggested that a win by Carnahan, who is white, might depress St. Louis African-American voter turnout in the fall.

If Clay, the son of Missouri’s first black congressman, wins, the state will very likely see a historic first that his father, William Lacy Clay, never could have envisioned when he was first elected to Congress in 1968 — a House delegation without a white Democrat.